OUR SEARCH FOR MEANING Victor Frankl Image Source: http://john.do/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/viktor-frankl.jpeg Victor Frankl (a psychiatrist) is the founder of the school of psychotherapy known as logotherapy. For Frankl, the search for meaning in life is the central task of the person. No animal has the power to ask the meaning of life. The person is ultimately free, even if the only freedom left is the freedom to choose one’s attitude to the circumstances of one’s life. Being free, we are also responsible. It is no use blaming one’s parents, schooling or environment for the way one turns out. Each person has the potential to do good and to do evil, and each person makes a choice: to do good or to do evil. Slides 3-8 have narration Earphones required Slides10-16 have interactive activities

You can’t give meaning to another – each person has to discover meaning in his or her own life. Frankl sees the striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in a person. He speaks of a will-to-meaning in contrast to the will-to-pleasure (Freud) or the will-to-power (Adler). He asserts that a meaning to life can be discovered by: doing a deed (Achieving) experiencing a value (Loving and being loved) suffering (Positive attitude to unalterable fate).

Where do these ideas come from for Frankl? On September 25, 1942 he, along with his wife, and his parents were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. There Frankl worked as a general practitioner in a clinic until his skill in psychiatry was noticed, when he was asked to establish a special unit to help newcomers to the camp overcome shock and grief. He later set up a suicide watch unit, and all intimations of suicide were reported to him. Image Source; http://voiceseducation.org/sites/default/files/images/3259457564_b252a9907c.jpg

http://mensteppingupblog. com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FranklViktor http://mensteppingupblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FranklViktor.jpg Image Source: http://mensteppingupblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FranklViktor.jpg To maintain his own feeling of being worthy of his sufferings in the dismal conditions, he would frequently march outside and deliver a lecture to an imaginary audience about "Psychotherapeutic Experiences in a Concentration Camp". He believed that by fully experiencing the suffering objectively, he would thereby end it. Though assigned to ordinary labour details until the last few weeks of the war, Frankl (assisted by Dr. Leo Baeck and Regina Jonas among others) tried to cure fellow prisoners from despondency and prevent suicide. He worked in the psychiatric care ward, headed the neurological clinic in block B IV, and established and maintained a camp service of psychic hygiene and mental care for sick and those who were weary of life.

It was due to his and others' suffering in these camps that he came to his hallmark conclusion that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful. This conclusion served as a strong basis for Frankl's logotherapy. An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Auschwitz concentration camp: Image source: https://jrbenjamin.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/viktor-frankl5.jpg

... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbour's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us." That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honourable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfilment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...."

Another important conclusion for Frankl was: If a prisoner felt that he could no longer endure the realities of camp life, he found a way out in his mental life– an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one that the SS were unable to destroy. Spiritual life strengthened the prisoner, helped him adapt, and thereby improved his chances of survival. Image Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ljdDluTEGW0/UeECYuyApfI/AAAAAAAABfI/2m9oP31IWDA/s1600/IMG.jpg

A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE PLATO (Philosopher) saw three elements as being present in a person: Reason Appetite Self-love A right understanding, ordering and use of these elements gives rise to a person’s possession of the four cardinal virtues: 1. Wisdom 2. Courage 3. Discipline 4. Justice FRANKL (Psychotherapist) saw the striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in a person. He speaks of a will-to-meaning in contrast to the will-to-pleasure (Freud) or the will-to-power (Adler). He asserts that a meaning to life can be discovered by: doing a deed (Achieving) experiencing a value (Loving and being loved) suffering (Positive attitude to unalterable fate). JESUS (Teacher) saw a person as a son/daughter of a loving Father, his/her creator. We can live in such a way as to find peace, freedom and wisdom. Love is the essence of life. Life has meaning. Jesus, himself, whilst truly human was truly divine. He was a man of hope who lived in intimate union with God and thereby derived insight into the meaning of life. In his time, Jesus touched profoundly the lives of those men and women who were open, listening and searching in attitude. Christians today believe that the risen Lord is active in their lives calling them to a love of the Father and one another.

EXERCISES Victor Frankl speaks about inner strength that can help to overcome all sorts of difficulties and suffering in our lives. Make a list of some of your inner strengths – eg determination, imagination, sense of humour, faith, etc.

Can you think of some suffering in your life that has helped you to grow… to become more patient? to be a better listener? to realise how much people care? to understand the suffering of other people better? to try harder in the future? other?

“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self- determining. What he becomes – within the limits of endowment and environment – he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave live swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualised depends on decisions but not on conditions. “…the way they (the prisoners) bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.” “If there is a meaning to life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering… without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.” “Everywhere man is confronted with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.” “The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life.” “Man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz: however; he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Israel on their lips.” I think the meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.” “Man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.” “He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW.” (Nietzche) “There is nothing in the world… that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning to one’s life.”